


you're running (i hitched a ride)

by happy_synthesizer



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Spoilers, Spoilers for the Golden Deer Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 13:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20136199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happy_synthesizer/pseuds/happy_synthesizer
Summary: They were trapped like rats, and the army hoping for her head knew it.[ON PERMANENT HIATUS]





	you're running (i hitched a ride)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from All For You by Rynx, a song I listened to a LOT during my GD playthrough.
> 
> HIATUS: So I made the mistake of playing through the rest of the routes on the game and was seriously triggered by the events in the Silver Snow route. As a result, I'm just not comfortable writing for Three Houses anymore. For everyone who was looking forward to this work, I'm really sorry but there's just no way for me to continue this project. -- Ash

“Your Majesty, I must insist that you remain indoors. It is not safe for you to be out in the open like this.”

Byleth’s eyes remained fixed on the horizon, where the silhouette of an army could be seen. “I’m not any safer inside, Seteth, you know that. Walls won’t matter if they have any gremories.” She began to tap her heel. “The reinforcements?”

He frowned. “They’re on their way, but… I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but there is no way for them to get here in time.”

Byleth grunted. “Right.” She had never felt comfortable about the decision to put off the hunt for the rest of the Nightcrawlers, but her advisors had insisted that the move to Derdriu was their top priority, so she’d let it go. That decision had come back to bite them in the form of the army lurking outside their front door. The scouting party had reported that the army was flying the Imperial banner and Cyril, who had gone out a good ten yards further than the rest of the party (despite the countless reprimands that they had all been giving him for years about _exactly _that kind of reckless behavior), had spotted a handful of mages that he recognized as Nightcrawlers. They had sent letters requesting reinforcements to every ally they had as soon as they’d been able, but it was the rainy season and most of the roads were impassable. She suspected that their attackers had been planning on exactly that.

The enemy forces had marched in from the west, no doubt hoping to pin them in against the Eastern Church’s territory. The Eastern Church had made their opinion on Byleth’s reign exceptionally clear – they had denounced her as an apostate and openly rejected her authority in the region. Of the numerous assassination attempts that had been made against Byleth since she had announced her plans to reform the church, four had been traced back to the Eastern Church. On top of that, the southern roads were flooded, which left the northern sea as their only means of escape. Except that the first thing the Nightcrawlers had done was send a battalion of mages to burn the harbor down.

They were trapped like rats, and the army hoping for her head knew it.

She removed her crown and turned it over in her hands. When Claude had told her that she would be the ruler Fódlan, she’d nearly thrown up. She had fought the Empire and the Kingdom and the Church for _him_, not for herself. From the moment that she had chosen to teach the Golden Deer, everything that she did was for him and that impossible dream of his. She had killed Dimitri and Edelgard and all the rest of the children that she had once taught so that Claude wouldn’t have to live with their blood on his hands. She had done it all because she believed in him. Believed in the world that he wanted to create.

She looked out, over the city that she had been pouring herself into these last few years. So much of Derdriu had been destroyed during the war that she had secretly wondered whether it would ever be whole again. But, as the months had passed, she had noticed something remarkable. Derdriu, whose architecture had once clearly marked it as former Kingdom territory, began to display other influences. You could find one building with Adrestian woodworking, another with Faerghus masonry, and another with Almyran stained-glass, all within the same district. The city still had a long way to go, as did the rest of the country, but it was a start. Derdriu was proof that Claude’s dream could be achieved.

And there was _no way in hell_ that she was going to let that be destroyed.

She placed the crown back on her head and turned to Seteth. “Muster whatever forces we have. If it’s a fight those bastards want, it’s a fight they’ll get.”


End file.
